Tunnel of Night

by John Philpin

And I had twenty-four hours until my final scene— the purest form of justice.

  The Quantico people—the few who paid any attention at all—seemed to be growing accustomed to my presence.

  When all other drives and desires have passed, burned themselves out on the dying embers of age and impotence, the one pure motivation remains.

  Vengeance.

  It has always been there. Not just for me, although I have nurtured it properly, sheltered it, forced it to blossom like white narcissus in winter. Rocks, water, bulbs, and an explosion into bloom.

  Vengeance.

  The affluent residents of Greenwich, not far from my former home in Hasty Hills, Connecticut, summoned their Hispanic servants to wipe their kids’ asses, clean the stains off the sheets they stole from hotels in Palm Springs or Aruba. They paid no taxes for their ass wipers and sheet washers.

  The Lord said vengeance was his. Fuck him if he can’t take a joke.

  In New Hampshire, a school board refused to allow the movie Platoon to be shown to a class on American affairs. Too much violence, too many murders. It was their war that I had attended. They owned the murders. How did they want it portrayed? As a barbecue under the fronds?

  Vengeance.

  Anything else is impure, dishonest.

  Today I can feel the rolling waves of Sibelius’s second symphony. The cellos, the violins, the horns, the timpani, vibrate on the surface of my skin. I have the spirit, the soul of the assassin. It is all that I have ever wanted.

  I reached across the table and tapped my photo in Red’s newspaper. “Interesting man,” I said.

  “Yes, sir. Sick. If he’s even alive.”

  “I had some minor involvement with that case,” I continued. “I’m John Krogh, by the way. I’m a visiting anthropology consultant. I think it would be possible to survive an explosion like that. Not terribly likely, though.”

  “What was your involvement, sir?” Red asked.

  The cadet was not at all interested. He was humoring an old bone man while he filled his face with food.

  “Two cases that remain on the books as unsolved, although I was convinced that they were Wolf’s work. The victims—the odd collection of bones that were left of the young women, at least—were found within a mile of one another. Rural area in Connecticut. Raccoons and coyotes had been at them. They’d eaten most of the flesh, of course.”

  He slowed his ingestion of eggs.

  In Vermont, after Lucas Frank shot me, I had seen ghosts on the road. As I drove north, shapes and faces curled up like smoke from the snow-covered highway. White shapes with gray faces in the black night. I rolled down the window to keep myself conscious. Then I heard the ghosts howling in the night.

  It is merely the wind, I told myself as hands reached out and grabbed at me, then were blown aside by the snarling, whining wind, winding itself up in cyclonelike coils.

  Vengeance.

  In the subway station at Park Square, Boston, just after I came home from the war, an old drunk told me that I was why we were losing Vietnam.

  “Fuckin’ got no balls,” he said, trying to burn his eyes into mine. “You’re a loser. I fought in the big one.”

  He hated me, but as he continued to stare, the blaze faded from his eyes. It was replaced with confusion. His grip relaxed, and he stepped backward. He was afraid of what he saw in my eyes.

  “You’re fuckin’ crazy,” he said.

  I moved toward him as he backed away.

  He waved his arms. “Stay away from me.”

  He was moving away fast, but I would not let him go. I gripped his coat and spun him around.

  “No,” he pleaded.

  When a subway cop grabbed me, the old man ran.

  “What the fuck?” the cop said, and I plunged a knife deep into his gut.

  Vengeance.

  As a child, sometimes I was attacked in my dreams. I was never equipped to defend myself, so before I knew any better, I tried prayer. It was always after hours at the church, and prayer is an unpredictable effort at best, so I was left with what I could devise.

  “Animal depredation is a real problem,” I told Red. “I don’t want to bore you with the intricacies of forensic anthropology, but…”

  “Sorry, sir,” Red said. “We’re due on the range. Louie?”

  As he walked away, I heard him mutter to his friend, “I gotta hit the head. My breakfast’s comin’ back up.”

  Solid recruits.

  I glanced at the wall clock. By now, US Air had delivered Dr. Frank back to Washington. Perhaps his brief respite in the mountains taught him the true magnitude of his task, and provided him with a proper appreciation of his ghostly counterpart.

  DARLA MICHAELS, AN ENTERPRISING INVESTIGATIVE reporter, had gotten her hands on the Wolf composites. She had also found a reliable source.

  The story was mildly sensational, but accurate, and contained information that I was finding out for the first time. According to the article, John Wolf was the most prolific serial killer in history. Thought to have died in an explosion nearly a year ago, he was alive and well, and terrorizing the nation’s capital, blah, blah, blah. Investigators had linked Wolf to three deaths in the metropolitan area: FBI Special Agent Dexter Willoughby, Nicholas Wesley, and Samantha Becker.

  What fucking investigators? Neither Lane nor Jackson would talk to the media, and nobody else was conceding anything. I wondered whether Darla Michaels believed in the Wolf angle, or was simply selling papers.

  Rescue workers reported only minor injuries, the story continued, following an explosion in the northeast section of the city. The blast—a bomb—was also attributed to Wolf. The presence of a hostage in the building moments before the explosion was unconfirmed.

  The article provided some of Wolf’s history, then quoted an anonymous source who placed NYPD Detective Lane Frank and her father, Dr. Lucas Frank, in the city working with local law enforcement and the FBI in the hunt for the elusive killer. “The father-daughter team tracked Wolf to Vermont last year, where the serial murderer was believed to have died,” the article concluded.

  What I had not known was that John Wolf, posing as Dr. Alan Chadwick, had lectured at Quantico four years ago. The sonofabitch was absolutely incredible.

  When the phone rang, I expected it to be Lane. It was Hiram Jackson. “You saw the paper?” he asked.

  “You didn’t tell me that Wolf taught at Quantico.”

  “I didn’t know that. I checked our records, and we did have an Alan Chadwick lecture at one of the homicide schools. I don’t have all the information yet.”

  “You said you had Landry checking Willoughby’s files.”

  Jackson said nothing.

  “If Landry is responsible for putting our names on the front page, I’ll break his fucking face. Look, we’d better get together. You have people in the cellar?”

  “They got started before dawn. Nothing so far. It will be business as usual in the hotel. I’m in Quantico right now. Herb Cooper’s consultant on that Oklahoma case is here.”

  Protocol.

  “Hiram, we don’t have much time. The Winklers and Parmenters have been dead for thirty years. They can wait a few more days. What about the 1985 case that Cooper worked with Willoughby?”

  “I’ve got a fax on that. How about if I meet you at the Willard for lunch?”

  I hung up.

  The knock on the door was Lane. “You see this?” she asked, holding her own paper and walking in.

  My coffee was right behind her. I poured for both of us and said, “There’s been too much morning already. Either I get to drink this, or I go back to sleep.”

  “Wolf was teaching at Quantico. Jesus Christ. Didn’t those assholes ever hear of doing a background? They must have zero security in that fucking fortress of theirs. I can’t believe this.”

  “I hope they paid attention to Wolf,” I said. “He would have had a thing or two to tell them.”

  Lane still had her head in the newspaper, but manag
ed to accept her coffee. I settled into a chair across from her. Finally, she looked at me. “You slept in your clothes. Why didn’t you go to bed? Were you out?”

  “One at a time,” I said. “I fell asleep in the chair.”

  The phone rang again. “Shit. That’s the reason I won’t have one of these fucking things. They ring all the time.”

  I was expecting the media. It was Detective Williams at the DCPD. “We just had two young women come in,” Williams said. “They saw the newspaper. The two of them were in the bar there at the Willard the night that Nick Wesley was murdered. They sat with the guy in the composite, talked to him. One of them says he had blood on his shirt.”

  “He didn’t clean up after Wesley,” I said, thinking how careless that was for a man like Wolf.

  “He explained it by saying there’d been an accident, and that he had pulled people out of the wreck. I checked with the traffic division. It’s a bullshit story”

  “What else do they remember about him? What more did he say?”

  “Their names are Courtney Davenport and Jean Posner. Davenport did most of the talking. The Posner kid was freaked by the guy as soon as she laid eyes on him. Said he was acting friendly enough, but he was strange, like he was sizing them up the whole time they were sitting there. It finally got to her. She insisted on leaving, so they left. Davenport thinks he said he was an archaeologist. She can’t remember anything else. Both of them are pretty shook.”

  “Are they still there?”

  “Yeah. We re just getting their statements typed now.”

  “Any objection to my talking to them?”

  “Not at all.”

  Lane was still reading the morning paper when I got off the phone. “How did the reporter get this stuff?” she asked. “How’s it gonna affect Wolf? God, this pisses me off.”

  “Would you please limit yourself to one question at a time? Jesus. I need time to wake up. They’ll probably assign a select committee to identify her source. Washington spends more time and money probing for leaks than dealing with the shit right under their noses. Wolf’s going to do whatever he’s going to do. It was planned a long time ago.”

  I grabbed my jacket. “That was your D.C detective just now.”

  “Williams?”

  “A couple of young women walked in. They think they might have spent part of an evening in The Nest with Wolf. I’m going over there to talk with them. They’re the best direct link we have to Wolf right now.”

  “I was headed there anyway. Let’s go.”

  As we walked through the Willard’s lobby, the atmosphere had not changed, just as Jackson had said— “business as usual.” I told Lane what was going on in the cellar of the building.

  “If Detective Williams’s two witnesses are right about seeing Wolf here,” I said, “it would seem to support the idea that he’s had time to familiarize himself with the place.”

  “You sound doubtful, Pop.”

  I shrugged. “Something isn’t right.”

  LANE AND I TALKED WITH THE TWO YOUNG WOMen, but got nowhere. Courtney Davenport could not stop talking, but she had nothing to add to what she had already said. Jean Posner seemed to be traumatized. She was composed, but quiet, almost withdrawn. She reminded me of victims of violent crime that I had treated years before.

  I asked to talk to Jean alone. She agreed. Williams directed us to an interrogation room that wasn’t in use. The two chairs were beat-up, folding metal, and someone had abandoned a dust-covered polygraph machine on the table. It wasn’t the best setting, but it would have to do.

  “Is it okay if I call you Jean?”

  She nodded.

  “Jean, most people discover that talking about a frightening incident helps. It’s unpleasant to recall all the details. Remembering can be almost as scary as the event itself. But it can be a way to put things to rest.”

  Jean nodded again.

  “You’ve heard of hypnosis, Jean,” I said.

  Once more, she nodded. Jean Posner was in a positive response set.

  “I don’t mean the watch-dangling kind, but a deep and gentle relaxation—a quiet place where two people agree to go together. You and I could do that. I would be with you the whole time. No one could hurt you. We can remember together, just like we were watching a tape on TV. You will control the picture and the sound of the video about that night in the Willard. Okay?”

  She tipped her head in a slight nod.

  “If you allow our eyes to close,” I continued, slowing the pace of my talking and lowering my tone of voice, “and allow your thoughts to drift freely through— effortlessly—and you take a deep breath, feeling the air fill your lungs, then, very slowly, let it out, as your eyelids … close … down.”

  Jean’s eyelids fluttered, then closed. Her breathing, which had been shallow and irregular, settled into a comfortable rhythm. I waited a full minute, then said, “Deeper.”

  I watched as the tension disappeared from her face. Her hands rested on her knees.

  “If you would take me back to that one particular night at the Willard,” I said.

  After a long pause, Jean said, “Our table is taken.”

  “What are you seeing?”

  “A man. We’re sitting across from him. Blood. He has blood on his shirt.”

  “What are you hearing, Jean?”

  “Bones. John digs up dead people. John is an anthropologist at Harvard. He’s looking at me. His eyes are dead.”

  The young woman began to tremble.

  “He’s a picture on a TV screen,” I said. “Whenever that picture upsets you, you have the power to switch it off.”

  In seconds, she had relaxed again. I was satisfied that she had told me all she could. I offered her the posthypnotic suggestion that she would control her awareness of what had happened that night. She would remember only what she could handle, when she was ready to deal with it.

  When I assisted her out of the trance, Jean smiled. “I haven’t been sleeping well. Work has been hectic. But I feel rested.”

  “You’ll allow yourself to sleep well tonight, I think.”

  Jean Posner went off to sign her statement, and I found Lane with Susan Walker.

  “We watched through the mirror,” Walker said. “Impressive. Jackson said you wanted to talk to me. I also wanted to thank you.”

  “Your appearance is a vast improvement over the last time we met. If I had paid more attention to you, I might not have been blown halfway across the street. I figured the bomb for a hoax.”

  “Jackson also told me it was your idea that I remain at Quantico. I appreciate your concern, but as you can see, I have refused. So, you have some questions? I hope you’re not planning to try on me what you just did to Ms. Posner.”

  “Certainly not.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lane wince at my lie. I watched as Susan Walker folded her arms across her chest, straightened her legs, and tensed them against the back wall of the cubicle.

  “I’d never go along with hypnosis,” Walker said. “I don’t think it would work with me, anyway.”

  I needed the subtleties, the nuances that only her subconscious would have registered during her time with Wolf. The Bureau’s debriefing wouldn’t have addressed those. She had watched me with Jean Posner. This was the perfect opportunity for an indirect hypnotic induction.

  “By your presence here,” I said to Walker, “I’m assuming you have clearance to talk with me.” She nodded.

  I turned to Lane. “Have you ever noticed, Lanie, that when people express their resistance to hypnosis, they tend to do it physically? They create tension in their own bodies—rigidity in the legs and arms. Even in their eyelids—working against their own desire to allow their eyes … slow now … to close … all the way … down. This resistance and tension seem to… go very deep.”

  Lane folded her own arms. “Someone should put a leash on you,” she said.

  When I looked back at Walker, her eyes were closed. She moved
her legs away from the wall and dropped her arms to a comfortable position on her lap. I remembered the tape across her eyes when I found her in Wolf’s apartment. “When we can’t see,” I began, “we sense things in other ways. We hear words that are spoken, the noise of people moving around us. We grow more sensitive to odors. We feel—tactile feelings, intuitive thoughts. We say that our minds race. It’s up to us to slow down. We do have that power.”

  “Soap,” Walker said. “I smell soap. No. Shaving cream. I hear water running.”

  She had also heard the clicking of Wolf’s wire cutters, and had smelled what she thought was hair coloring. This fit with what the woman at the bar where Wesley was killed had told me. Wolf had changed his appearance.

  Occasionally, a bit of mind manipulation is necessary I spent the next hour listening as Walker traveled beyond cognition and beneath conscious thought. The details of Willoughby’s death would pique her cohorts. I was more interested in the rage she heard in Wolf’s voice when he complained that Quantico had not thought of him after Chadwick plunged to his death. His was the fury of the neglected narcissist. He was telling her that he was the superior man—that he created his own opportunities—that he was a sophisticated traveler with a taste for fine food, and that he had risen from beneath the earth.

  He also described his time with Walker as a “dress rehearsal,” and reminded her how fond he was of explosive devices.

  What the hell was he going to do? Was his target the Willard? How was he planning to gather his cast of players?

  When I felt that I had everything that I was going to get from Susan Walker, I turned back to Lane and terminated the trance in the same indirect manner that I had used for the induction.

  Walker sat up in her chair, stretched, and asked, “So, what do you want to know, Dr. Frank?”

  “I’ve got to run,” I told her. “I’m meeting Agent Jackson at the Willard. Lane, perhaps you would explain.”

  Lane followed me, telling Walker she would be right back. “Are you getting anything out of all this?” my daughter asked.

  “The question has always been, what is Wolf’s notion of the ultimate act of power and humiliation? What would give him the greatest satisfaction? We need to view the world as he does, not attribute our perceptions to him. Wolf told Walker to talk to me. What I have is a notion about tunnels, something underground, something buried. Maybe the Willard. I don’t know. I do know that it’s set for tomorrow, the anniversary of our confrontation in the cellar in Vermont. We also have the distinct possibility that our killer is walking around posing as an anthropologist.”